with nowhere to park. Newspapers
stapled at the margin, written in another

kind of English, and there were no oranges
for sale. No dry brush for wildfires.

At junctures of snow we had no prayers
we could not string words into sentences.
We could not even tell the difference.

Raul Alvarez

Raul Alvarez is the author of There Was So Much Beautiful Left (Boost House) and holds an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. His work has been published in Fourteen Hills, Inferior Planets, PANK, Fanzine, Pinwheel, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Seattle and works for Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.